Friday, May 13, 2011

Clear the Clutter

I fell off the de-cluttering bandwagon. I got sidetracked with the remodel of my son's room, which has taken longer then expected. I have a problem with starting a new project if the first is not complete. Normally, that is very good, but when a project is delayed, I just sit and wait. Not the most productive use of my time. It's still going to be a few weeks before everything is in order and ready to be reveled, so I need to kick myself in the rear end and work on de-cluttering another area during this wake.

Luckily I signed up for what looks to be a fabulous class called Finding Photo Freedom. The class is over at Big Picture Classes and is being taught by Stacy Julian. The preassignment for the class really got me working on organizing and de-cluttering my digital photos.

I'm using iphoto on my mac for my photo organization. I've created smart folders for each of the four quarters of the years as I work on that year. There are basically three steps. 1) purge - delete the really bad photos (i.e. blurry, someones head cut off) and only keep a few of multiple photos (i.e. the 20 photos you took of your child jumping rope). 2)rate - using the star system in iphoto I rate the photos with 1, 2 or 3 stars. 3 stars means - this picture is awesome, I need to scrapbook it. 2 stars means - these would be great for a supporting photos to that awesome photo. 1 star means - I would hate to see this photo disappear, but I probably will not print it out.

Not ever photo gets a star. My smart folders only show me the photos for that time period that received a 1,2 or 3 star. So I only need to looks through my best photos when I'm read to work with them. So far, I'm really loving this system. I only work on it 4-5 times per week for 15-30 minutes. I started with the most current and I'm working my way back.

To make sure I keep up with this system, I put two reminders on my To Do list. The first is a reminder to download all my photos onto my computer. The second is to organize and rate them. Doing this task once a month will be much easy to handle.

It feels so good getting back to my de-cluttering. Do you have any digital clutter that you need to tackle? I know I still have to de-clutter my hard drive and organize my digital scrapbooking supplies, which will be a huge job.

2 comments:

I'm also working on photo-tagging, but I'm adding name, place, event tags as I go along too. And I took the opposite approach, working from my oldest forward. My digi photos start with June of 2002. I have 2002 complete and last night finished through May of 2003. Have no idea what I'm going to do when I get to all of my "Picture" series class photos - probably a lOT of purging!

So glad you are taking the Finding Photo Freedom workshop! WTG getting started on the digital photo organization - that was one of the best things for me when I took the class last year because I had not printed ANY of my digital photos due to lack of a plan! "See" you in class!

About Me

I'm a SAHM and part-time Design Student. I'm trying to reclaim my life from the self-imposed pressure of trying to be perfect.
I've been blessed to be the mom of three amazing boys that keep me on the go and fill my life with joy (and other emotions at times).
I love to create. I also like to read, work-out, eat clean and learn more about health & fitness.